Police at the UMBC Catonsville campus said a female student called campus police at about 5:15 a.m. Thursday about a man displaying a gun while they were in his car at the north quadrant of campus near the West Hill Apartments.

Baltimore County police said at some point the armed man, identified as a UMBC student, fled on foot leaving the woman unharmed. Police said the two were acquaintances.

UMBC Police Chief Mark Sparks said the woman involved in the incident is being questioned by detectives.

County and university police searched the campus extensively -- including inside residence halls and dorm rooms -- looking for the man and found what they said they believe is the weapon. But they concluded the armed man was no longer hiding on the campus.

"A gunman -- that's pretty scary," UMBC student Megan Capano said.

Detectives said they later picked up the suspect in Timonium, and charges are pending against him. Police did not say how they tracked the man down, and they didn't identify him.

Students: Text alerts were too vague

Detectives said the university sent out text alerts to students warning of a possible gunman near the Westhill apartments and that students should either stay inside or delay coming to campus.

Students said they are relieved things are back to normal, but said they felt more could have been done to keep them safe.

"I received the text message and I was confused at first. It was very vague," UMBC student Alec Pence said.

Students received alert two text messages from the university about the incident. The initial message that went out warned student about the suspect and to stay away from the area. The second alert message stated there's strong evidence the suspect left the area, a weapon was recovered and to resume normal activities. Many felt the messages were too vague.

"They said that the search is completed just because they believe he's gone," Pence said.University police said they're limited by the technology.

"One of the difficulties that we experience in all institutions with the text alert technology is that you're limited to 140 characters, so it makes it hard for you to put out a lot of information at any one time," Sparks said.

Another concern students said they had is that not everyone was aware of the situation since they didn't sign up for the alert text messages. The university responded to the matter.

"There are many ways that the campus systematically informs students of the text messaging service, including orientation programs and materials, information in residence halls and on MyUMBC our campus IT portal. And when we do have situations where it is necessary to provide campus safety alerts, we follow it up with a reminder memo to the community to sign up with the E2Campus alerts."

Officials said since the incident was isolated to one part of the campus, it wasn't closed. Not too many students were there at the time because of the summer session.

Stay with WBALTV.com and WBAL-TV 11 News for more details as they become available.